Soldier on the Hill

by French, Jackie

  Joey nodded. His eyes hurt. He had a horrible feeling he might cry, though there was nothing to cry about, not really …

  ‘You’re not still worrying about that bloke you thought you saw? Now don’t you be doing that, dear. The Japanese aren’t going to invade. Of course they’re not.’

  ‘Everyone says they are. Even the Prime Minister …’

  Sister hesitated. ‘Well, maybe they are then. But there’s no reason for you to worry about it. And no reason for you to go thinking you see Japanese up in the hills either. The evil of the day is sufficient to the … well, it goes something like that anyway.’

  ‘But I did —’

  Sister pulled the blanket even tighter. ‘Let me tell you — in all my years here I’ve seen lots of people think they saw some funny things. Why I remember once …’

  Sister sat back comfortably in the chair that Mum had sat in and stretched her feet out. ‘Now let me think, what was his name … Lennie Jacobs, that was it, I knew it’d come to me. You should have heard him! He thought he saw a kangaroo as tall as the sky when the log fell on his foot.

  ‘Three days he was out there and not a drop to drink in all the heat. It’s a blessed mercy Dan the trapper came along when he did. Lennie still swears to this day he saw that kangaroo …’ Sister spread her legs out more comfortably.

  ‘… and when Mrs Jamieson had her fifth, oh I remember that day like it was yesterday. She was sure she heard a voice saying it’d be a son who’d be Prime Minister one day and save the world. Quite definite the voice was. The kid’d have a red beard and grow up to be six foot three.’

  Sister laughed softly and shook her head. ‘But of course she had a girl, another one — that’s five she’s got now. And as for some of the men when they’ve been on the grog … well, fairies and pink elephants have nothing on it. Don’t you worry about it,’ Sister said gently. ‘Pain makes you think all sorts of things. Pain and terror too. The best of us see things when we’re in pain that are never there. You understand?’

  Joey nodded slowly.

  ‘Tell you what, dear. I’ll just sit with you a while till you’re asleep, will I? You’ve been alone enough the past two days. It’s a pity your Mum can’t be with you, but rules are rules, though I sometimes think … but there, that’s enough of that.’

  Sister settled back in the chair by the bed. ‘You won’t tell anyone if I slip my shoes off, will you, dear? They’re really giving me jip lately. We’re that shorthanded since Sister Halligan went off to Sydney — she’s sailing overseas any day now. We got a letter just last week.’

  Sister clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘What am I saying? Careless talk costs lives, eh. Who knows who’s listening? Though you’re the only one in here as a matter of fact, except for the old dears down the back, though goodness knows what it’ll be like tomorrow.’

  A dog barked far away; another answered, and then silence. Joey settled back into his pillow. It felt so soft. Why had he never realised pillows were so soft before?

  ‘Your Mum looked in the pink, didn’t she dear?’ Sister’s voice was far away. ‘It must be, well, getting on for fifteen years since I saw her last, ever since she married your Dad … oh, I’m sorry dear — I heard about your Dad, I shouldn’t have mentioned …’

  Joey’s eyes began to close. Sister was right, he thought. It was good to have someone nearby, even if she kept on talking, talking …

  ‘… of course I was at school with your Aunt Genie. She’s doing so well now. An AWAS Captain, isn’t she? Who would have thought it back then? Though that’s what they always said about the O’Connell girls, they could manage anything. Give them a willy-willy and they’d straighten it out …

  ‘Eugenia, Eulallie and Euphemia O’Connell, but of course they were Genie, Lallie and Feemie right from the start. My Len always said you could always tell when one of the O’Connell girls was coming down the street. Tall and straight with big bosoms, all three of them, but Feemie’s was bigger than Lallie’s, and Lallie’s was bigger than Genie’s, though I suppose I shouldn’t be saying things like that to you, dear, should I? And Feemie was the blonde one and Lallie a shade darker and Genie the darkest of all. I remember Len saying …’

  She was still talking as Joey fell asleep.

  chapter seven

  Aunt Lallie’s

  * * *

  From the Biscuit Creek Gazette, 1942

  SEND THEM VICTORIOUS!

  Send them the power to overcome our enemies, send them the arms and equipment to fight on land and sea, send them practical proof of our faith and unity!

  Send them victorious by sending your money liberally to the second Liberty Loan …

  * * *

  Aunt Lallie’s house was always dark inside. Partly because of the trees across the windows, thought Joey. The orange tree outside the kitchen, and the fruit salad plant whose giant leaves brushed back and forth against the wall every time there was a breeze.

  But even the walls were dark; the cream and gold wallpaper in the lounge room, and the dull green kitchen, and leaves all over the wallpaper even in the room he shared with Mum. Stupid leaves, all brown and red and cream.

  Because of the fruit salad plant it was hard to see much out the window, even though his bed was opposite. Just dull green leaves, and a hint of blue beyond that was the hills. You’d never think there was ever any danger in those pale blue hills, thought Joey from his pillows.

  Out in the kitchen the wireless burst into the short piece of music from ‘British Grenadiers’ that announced the ABC news, then the no-nonsense mutter of the newsreader. A dog barked down the road. ‘Hey, news time!’ someone yelled from further down.

  The front door opened. Aunt Lallie’s steps were slightly muffled by the carpet as she trotted down the corridor.

  ‘Feemie! Feemie, did you put those flowers on the kitchen table?’

  ‘Aren’t they pretty? Mrs Williams brought them to the hospital for Joey.’

  ‘Feemie, you know very well that daisies make the water smell. We’ll have to throw them out tomorrow … is Joey back then?’

  ‘Yes, Sister said she’d call in tomorrow on her way home and see how he’s going.’

  ‘I’ll just pop in as soon as I take my hat off and keep him company for a moment, then.’

  ‘How was the Comfort Fund Meeting?’ asked Mum. There was a clank was she put something in the oven.

  Aunt Lallie was president of the Comfort Fund Committee, just as she was president of every other committee in Biscuit Creek, or treasurer or secretary or madam this or that. Aunt Lallie was always DOING things.

  Of course, Mum was always doing things too. (‘You’ll wear out the doormat love, and as for bossy …’ Dad had said, but he’d laughed when he said it.) But Mum could laugh at herself too.

  Aunt Lallie never laughed at herself. You could tell by the corners of her mouth, and her lipstick was never smudged and her gloves were always spotless. (‘Dirt would never dare stick to your Aunt Lallie,’ Mum had whispered once when Aunt Lallie and Uncle Don had come up to Sydney to visit.)

  ‘It was an excellent meeting,’ said Aunt Lallie firmly. ‘Sandra Duchasne suggested a doorknock appeal, but I said no, we already did that for the Red Cross last month, what we need now is something different … Do put an apron on, Feemie. That’s a lovely blouse and you’ll get butter all over it. It’s so hard to get out butter stains.’

  Aunt Lallie’s heels were louder now on the lino.

  ‘Well, my lad, you’ve caused a storm and a half haven’t you?’ Aunt Lallie’s voice was kinder than her words as she sat down with her knitting. Khaki wool and four thin needles; one of Aunt Lallie’s projects now was knitting socks for soldiers. Three pairs a week, she’d tell you proudly, and that didn’t count the vests and balaclavas, too.

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Joey meekly.

  ‘Accident or no, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gone where you weren’t supposed to,’ Aunt Lallie pointed out, her ne
edles clicking like hens pecking at their wheat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Lallie.’

  ‘And so you ought to be. Well, I’ve brought you some wool to untangle for the Red Cross. You can do that in bed. Can’t have you just lying there doing nothing. There’s a war on you know.’

  Mum looked round the door. ‘Sister at the hospital said he wasn’t to use his hand for the next two days.’

  Aunt Lallie hesitated. ‘Then he can catch up on his schoolwork then. Nan Pringle down at the school says his handwriting’s …’

  ‘Miss Pringle picks on me!’

  ‘Joseph Smith! I won’t have you talk about your teacher like that! If you were mine I’d scrub your mouth out.’

  ‘Maybe she does pick on him,’ said Mum.

  ‘She does! It’s because I’m not in any of the war effort things. And I can’t,’ he went on hurriedly, before Aunt Lallie could interrupt. ‘That dumb girl from the baker’s is in charge of them all and she doesn’t tell me if there’s going to be a saucepan drive or anything like that, so I can’t bring anything in. They call me ‘Bomb Dodger’, too, and then when I haven’t collected anything Miss Pringle glares at me and I didn’t even know …’

  ‘Maybe you could start your own war drive for something,’ Aunt Lallie offered more sympathetically.

  ‘No,’ said Mum firmly. ‘That would just put this girl even more offside. You’ll just have to get on her good side Joey, that’s all.’

  Joey snorted.

  It was hard to get to sleep after sleeping so much during the day.

  Joey lay awake and listened to Mum snuffling in the bed against the other wall. (Aunt Lallie had another empty room, but that was Merv’s and Bruce’s — no one was allowed to go in there till they came home, just like no one was allowed to touch Uncle Don’s pipes on the mantelpiece, not even to dust them. Aunt Lallie’s voice had cut like an axe when Mum had tried.)

  The fruit salad plant scratched against the wall. Next door’s cat yowled inquiringly. Another answered further away. It was funny to think of the cat’s world going on when humans were asleep, thought Joey.

  Did soldiers fight at night, or did battles stop when it got dark? He wondered who he could ask. Not Mum — she’d just say she didn’t know (in that tight voice she’d got since Dad went missing) when anyone talked about the war. Not Aunt Lallie either, or Miss Pringle.

  Dad would be the one to ask. It was unimaginable that he’d never get to ask Dad anything again. Dad didn’t seem dead, so he maybe he wasn’t dead at all. Maybe he was hiding out, like the Japanese up on the hill.

  Was he still there? Joey slid out of bed, peered between the whispering curtains. Which hill had he been on? It was hard to tell from here. That one, he thought, or maybe that one there …

  Maybe the Jap would have lit a fire. If he saw it Joey could pinpoint where it was, show Sergeant Williams tomorrow and even if the Jap wasn’t there anymore (he’d see them coming probably and disappear) he could say, ‘That’s where he was!’

  Why hadn’t they believed him? Because he was a kid, thought Joey irritably. No one believed you when you were a kid.

  If an adult had seen the Jap they’d have gone all out to find him by now; called the army in, got dogs and trackers. But he was a kid so it was just imagination …

  How had the Japanese got there? Someone would have heard a plane. There’d been planes over Sydney, but not down here. From a ship off the coast? Or a sub maybe. Like one of those subs that had sunk the ship Jeff Travers’ Dad had been on. Maybe the Japanese had come ashore in dinghies from the sub.

  Not lots of Japanese. One Japanese.

  The more he thought about it the more he knew the soldier on the hill was alone. If there were others, they’d have helped drag him up. Or ordered that one not to, in case Joey raised the alarm. And the way the Jap was dressed; the too-big shirt and his dirty trousers and bare feet. He had bare feet? Joey hadn’t thought of that before.

  If only he’d been able to pay more attention, instead of being in his own world, inside the pain.

  Maybe a sub had sunk and his Jap was the only one who had survived.

  Why had the Jap rescued him anyway? It was no skin off the Jap’s nose to let him sit there till he died. Mum had told him the search parties had covered all that area (he’d thought he’d heard Mum’s voice that time) but he must have been almost unconscious when they passed.

  Japanese men weren’t supposed to help people. The Japanese bayoneted babies and bombed schools and hospitals and tortured prisoners and …

  Maybe the Japanese had been going to torture him when Jack and Jimbo came along … but that didn’t make sense either. The blokes had come because the Jap had lit the fire. The Jap must’ve lit the fire to attract their attention and then he’d slipped away.

  Had he been hiding up among the thornbush when Jack and Jimbo came, making sure they rescued him, that he was safe? Suddenly Joey was sure he had. But it didn’t matter. He was still a Jap. Who knew why Japs did things?

  Who cared either? If the Japanese man was there he had to be caught. He had to find him, find proof that he was there so Sergeant Williams could set a trap.

  As soon as his foot was well enough he’d go back up the hill.

  He bet the kids wouldn’t call him Bomb Dodger then.

  chapter eight

  Myrtle

  * * *

  From the Biscuit Creek Gazette, 1942

  SAVE FOR VICTORY!

  With Australia called upon to find a million pounds a day for war purposes it is clear that Australia’s seven million people must save rather than spend when, as the Prime Minister points out, we are fighting for survival as starkly as if smallpox were sweeping the land …

  * * *

  Her name was Myrtle. Half the time it sounded like Mergle, thought Joey. Mergle, mergle, mergle, like water gurgling down a drain.

  She was tall and thin. Legs like a chook’s, thought Joey uncharitably, and hair the colour of milk loaf. Her Dad was the baker, so maybe he mixed it up in the bread dough every night. She had a red nose that dripped and too-big teeth.

  And she was perfect. Simply perfect. Everybody seemed to think so.

  ‘And now Myrtle will give us a report on the saucepan drive,’ said Miss Pringle. ‘Thank you, Myrtle.’

  Myrtle stood up, sniffed and wiped her nose. She picked up the piece of paper on her desk.

  ‘Thirty-nine saucepans,’ she announced importantly. ‘Two billies and a frypan. And Mrs Donovan gave us three lids that don’t fit anything. We delivered them down to the Red Cross on Saturday afternoon. Mrs Dennison says we should get a special letter of thanks from Headquarters.’

  ‘Why, that’s wonderful Myrtle,’ said Miss Pringle.

  Miss Pringle was pretty, with really bright lipstick and hair like a frothy wave. Aunt Lallie said she was engaged to Morrie Morris in the RAAF. They’d got engaged when he was on his embarkation leave.

  Myrtle smirked. At least it looked like a smirk to Joey. Stupid name, Myrtle. It was a plant or something wasn’t it? Why didn’t she get her hair cut like other girls and …

  ‘Joey … Joey Smith, are you listening?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, yes, Miss Pringle.’

  ‘I said open your books at …’

  Had school been as boring as this back in Sydney? wondered Joey. At least he knew everybody there. He had his own mob of friends. He wasn’t part of anybody’s mob down here.

  ‘… and then turn to page seventy-three,’ said Miss Pringle. ‘And complete the problems there.’

  ‘Hey, Bomb Dodger!’

  Joey turned round unwillingly. ‘Yep?’

  ‘Heard you found a Jap last week.’ It was Jimmo Morgan, one of the big gangly kids from Heyer’s Crossing. He boasted that he was going to leave school next month when he turned fourteen and go off shearing. School was a mug’s game, he said, and there were plenty of sheds that’d take him on with all the men away. ‘Or a Jap found you, eh?’

  Joey nodd
ed.

  ‘He follow you down from Sydney, eh? Heard you were scared of the bombs and …’

  ‘At least my Dad didn’t wait for the call up,’ said Joey heatedly. ‘At least my Dad …’

  ‘Why you …’ Jimmy dropped into a pugilist’s crouch.

  ‘Break it up there!’ Miss Pringle’s voice cut across the playground.

  ‘He started it!’ muttered Jimmy. ‘He said …’

  ‘No I didn’t …’

  ‘Well, you can both stand outside Mr Henderson’s, I mean, Miss Fingle’s, office till the bell goes. You just stand there.’

  Joey nodded. Mr Henderson used to be the school principal, but he was with the Seventh Division now. There were no male teachers at all in Biscuit Creek, and the only one at his old school up in Sydney had been Mr Peterson, who was too old for the call up. Heck, thought Joey, old Peterson was too old to pull his pants up …

  He glanced over at Jimmo. Jimmo’s face was red. From embarrassment or anger? wondered Joey. Not that it mattered. Creeps like Jimmo didn’t matter at all. Not if you had friends you could go and laugh with later …

  It just takes time to settle in, Mum said. What did she know? She’d grown up here, hadn’t even moved to Sydney till she married Dad. What did she know about being bunged into the middle of a lot of strangers?

  ‘Bomb dodger,’ whispered Jimmo, almost too soft to hear.

  chapter nine

  Miss Tidcombe

  * * *

  From the Biscuit Creek Gazette, 1942

  VEGETABLES FOR VICTORY

  The new Biscuit Creek Fruit and Vegetable Committee has announced the production of a leaflet which aims to make the town independent of commercial growers of vegetable supplies, thus freeing more manpower for the war effort. Competitions will be held for the best produce, the first being confined to schoolchildren and Boy Scouts and householders, who are all asked to cultivate small plots.